Butch Lacy tribute concert at Dizzy’s to salute former San Diego jazz mainstay

Before he became legendary singer Sarah Vaughan’s pianist and musical director in the early 1980s, Butch Lacy was a vibrant mainstay of the San Diego jazz scene. (See below for our 2002 interview with Lacy.)

He led multiple bands, including his jazz-meets-chamber-music String Consort, and helped mentor such gifted young artists as saxophonist Hollis Gentry, singer Ella Ruth Piggee and guitarist Peter Sprague.

The bearded pianist moved to Denmark in 1982, where he achieved new prominence as a performer, band leader, composer and jazz teacher (whose students included future Prince bassist Ida Nielsen). Lacy — who counted Lee Konitz and Chet Baker among his past collaborators — died on April 5 in Denmark at the age of 70.

He will be saluted Friday at Dizzy’s by Sprague, bassist Gunnar Biggs, saxophonist Mark Lessman, pianist Barnaby Finch and drummer Duncan Moore. Proceeds go to some of Lacy’s favorite music education organizations in Denmark.

“Remembering Butch Lacy” tribute concert: 8 p.m. Friday. Dizzy’s at Arias Hall (behind the Musician’s Association building), 1717 Morena Blvd., Bay Park. $20. (858) 270-7467. dizzysjazz.com

Ex-San Diegan builds a musical home in Denmark | Pianist Lacy stages rare local concert

By GEORGE VARGA, San Diego Union-Tribune, Oct 13, 2002

European jazz musicians and fans have long considered the United States an artistic mecca. But after touring nationally and abroad with jazz vocal icon Sarah Vaughan in the early 1980s, pianist Butch Lacy has realized some of his greatest creative ambitions as a resident of Denmark.

“The fascination with American musicians I’ve experienced (in Denmark) vs. the lack of fascination in America is like people living in New York who never went up to the Empire State Building,” said Lacy, a former San Diegan who performs a rare local concert tonight at downtown’s all-ages Dizzy’s with bassist Gunnar Biggs. “And Sarah told me that you can never be a star in your own hometown.”

In fact, Lacy created quite a splash in San Diego during the late 1970s and early ‘80s, when he was one of the dominant figures on the local jazz scene. But after his tenure with Vaughan ended in 1982, he concluded that a move abroad was in order to try to fulfill his creative ambitions.

It was a propitious decision, as illustrated by Lacy’s extensive work arranging and composing for the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra. He also taught for eight years an an assistant professor at Copenhagen’s prestigious Rhythmic Music Conservatory (where his fellow faculty members included drum great Ed Thigpen, esteemed pianist Horace Parlan and Danish contrabass master Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen), and for another eight years at the Conservatory of Music in West Jutland.

Speaking recently by phone from his rural Danish home in Fladstrup, Lacy sounded like a man still marveling at his good fortune 19 years after moving abroad. And with an absorbing new live album, “Butch Lacy Solo — But Not Alone” (Sundance), and the impending opening of the Music School, which Lacy will head near his home, he’s more enthused than ever.

“I think it’s clear to every person that there are more dimensions to their life than just what’s in front of their nose,” said Lacy, a longtime yoga and meditation devotee who approaches music in an almost spiritual manner.

“There are resources in looking into silence, and also into a physical kind of silence in the body, where stress doesn’t have a chance to come, or where the thought of presenting and performing music can become much more an act of free expression.”

Lacy, 55, has coined a simple phrase — It’s the music that’s looking for the musician — to describe his teaching philosophy. And while he notes that many others have expressed a similar view, he’s eager to help students achieve greater clarity and focus.

“I’m not doing this because I think I know all the answers,” Lacy said. “But the Music School seems to me a place where we can give people a chance to develop and research and try things out and experiment. My work is music, but also to try to make a bridge between the mediation experience and how that relates spiritually and physically to the musician.”

Lacy’s visit here this week was prompted by the wedding Friday of his daughter, Piper, 28, an Oceanside nursing school student and brewery manager. Yet while the bearded pianist returns here for visits about every other year, he hopes to achieve a higher U.S. profile without relocating.

“I’m an American,” Lacy said, in an exaggerated drawl. “And I’m a very, very permanent Danish resident.”

Musical monsters?

A great thing about music is that you can never predict what an artist might do next. Unfortunately, that’s also the scary thing about music

Case in point: Rick Derringer’s “Free Ride” and George Winston’s “Night Divides the Day: the Music of the Doors” — two new albums that might make amnesia seem like a good thing.

“Free Ride” finds Derringer, the former Johnny and Edgar Winter band member, reinventing himself as a smooth-jazz guitarist. This move seems predicated on the dubious premise that listeners have been clamoring to hear neo-elevator music versions of such mid-1970s Edgar Winter Band hits as “Free Ride” and “Frankenstein,” now re-titled “Frankenstein (Smooth Frank).” Also included is “Jazzy Koo (Rock-N-Roll Hoochie Koo),” a tepid remake of Derringer’s own 1974 hit, which disguises the fact he was once a potent guitarist.

And on Winston’s new album, the New Age piano dullard plays noodling versions of such Doors’ classics as “Love Me Two Times,” “Break on Through” and “The Crystal Ship.”

Ex-Doors’ keyboardist Ray Manzarek, who should know better, has endorsed the album, stating: “I love this CD; George has captured the essence of the Doors and added his own unique voice.”

Too bad that voice sounds like wet wallpaper. But how long until we hear “Yanni Plays the Best of Iron Butterfly” or Robin Trower remakes his 1974 album “Bridge of Sighs” as the smooth-jazz “Bridge of More Sighs”? Musical somnambulists await breathlessly.

george.varga@sduniontribune.com

Twitter @georgevarga